Does Parenting Really Have To Be This Hard?

There was a time in my parenting life, when I really wondered if the amount of effort I was putting into raising my kids was worth the effort. I had a lot of great reasons for parenting the way I did, but on the more trying of days I couldn’t help but think I was making it harder than it needed to be.

Looking at it now I realize I found this job so hard for the following reasons:

1. I cared a lot about doing a good job and being a great parent
2. Because I cared about doing a good job, I was putting a lot of energy into being self aware and analyzing why things had gone the way they did
3. Because I was analyzing things so much and really looking for the “reason” behind things, I was taking both my own and my kids mistakes/failures personally
4. Because I was taking things personally I was allowing self-doubt, guilt and uncertainty to weigh me down

I thought this would be an interesting revelation to share with fellow parents. Parenting (in my opinion) is harder when you really care about doing a good job. The other reasons were caused more by my own efforts and less from anything my kids were doing.

If I hadn’t cared so much, I might have just reacted – punished when it suited my purpose and raised kids who listened to me because they felt they had no other choice. I don’t mean to be minimizing the challenges faced by parents who have taken this route or to even suggest it is wrong, but I can tell you this…

Today I have strong, positive relationships with my kids. They truly are wonderful teens – sure my son wears his pants too low, exhausts me with his negotiating and has a real “smart” mouth at times. He’s a “C” average student in high school and I’m sure will make some “interesting” choices as life goes along. Despite this, he is well liked, communicative and respectful most of the time.

My daughter gets involved (sometimes causes) all kinds of friendship drama at school and has a look that can kill from twenty feet away. Her room is messy beyond belief and she avoids chores like the plague. But she is also very caring, determined, self assured and creative. She excels at school and is quick to pick up when people are not respecting her boundaries.

Both of them make me laugh a lot and bring way more joy into my life than they could ever take from it. I have, and will continue, to make numerous parenting errors…but somehow I now know these things only add to the parenting experience.

So, if you are parenting young children, putting in a lot of effort and questioning if it is worth it, I believe it truly is. I think I would have benefited from hearing that back when those feelings were surfacing for me and that is why I share this story.

I would love to hear your thoughts and stories…

Debbie Pokornik is the owner of empowering NRG. She is the author of Break Free of Parenting Pressures and believes all parents can use support at some point in their parenting experience. For other great parenting tips or to book Debbie for keynotes/workshops, go to http://empoweringnrg.com/

Effective Listening; How to Open Your Mind, Your Heart and Your Ears

Empathic Listening is a tool aimed at helping people connect and really hear what another person is telling them. To do it correctly, we must imagine ourselves in the other person’s situation and try to relate to how they are feeling. It is done with open ears, mind, and heart. Our goal is to detach from our own feelings and work on understanding the feelings of the other person. This can be challenging if what we are hearing affects us as well, but it is a key piece to getting the whole story.

The main strategy of Empathic Listening is the following:

• Identify the speaker’s feeling behind the words (anger, disappointment…)
  
• Empathize--try to think how you would feel in that person’s situation and share these thoughts with the speaker (warning: do not say I know how you feel!)
  
• Reflect back what you have heard, clarify if necessary
  
• Assist with problem solving ONLY if requested to do so

Example of Empathic Listening with child’s emotional outburst:

Child: I hate Grandma!

Parent: You sound angry. What’s going on?

Child: Grandma’s mean, she never plays with me

Parent: Hmm, I don’t think I’d like it if my Grandma never played with me, especially if she used to play with me a lot.

Child: Yeah. Now she’s always busy with the baby.

Parent: (nodding) So, do you think the problem is that she’s spending too much time with the baby?

Child: Yeah. Can I have a cookie?

Two important points:

1. Getting past the strong opening statement the child uses can be a hurdle for many parents. Those are BIG words, and if we want to find out where they are coming from we have to ignore our own emotions and listen for our child’s.
   
2. The child ended the conversation without asking the parent to help fix the problem. Parents love to fix problems, even when they are not asked to do so. In this case, and in more cases than you might imagine, the child just needed to be heard. His feelings were making him uncomfortable resulting in his strong opening statement. At some point he might bring it up with his parent again and ask for help with ideas, but if not, it is far more empowering for him if the parent just allows the conversation to end there.

Example of Empathic Listening with a bullying disclosure:

Child: I pretended to be sick because Bart said he was going to bash my head in and teach all the wimps at school a lesson!

Parent: Wow that sounds pretty scary.

Child: I’m not scared, I’m mad!

Parent: Okay, mad makes sense too… if it were me I think I’d be both mad and scared.

Child: Could I stay home tomorrow?

Parent: I wish I could let you. I don’t think I would want to go back either. I think the school might get upset though.

Child: They won’t care. You can just tell them I’m sick.

Parent: You know what Bart is doing is not okay. He has no right to treat you or anybody like that. What he’s doing is bullying. How about we come up with a plan to help you work through this problem?

In this case the parent raises the idea of problem solving together. Bullying is a serious issue that only arises when there is a power imbalance of some sort. Often our kids will need some guidance to work their way through it.

If the child responded by saying, “No. I’ll deal with it myself,” the parent could agree but end with a check back statement. “Okay, how about I check in with you again on the weekend to see how it went?” The result would be a child who feels supported, cared for and empowered by his parent’s belief in his ability.

Sometimes we have trouble identifying the name of the feeling and in fact the speaker himself might not be clear how he feels. Don’t get caught up in identifying the feeling or it could become a circus, (i.e., Are you mad? No. Irritated? No! Frustrated? No! Furious? NO!) The idea is to connect with the person by trying to understand his feeling. Guessing it right is not that important. We will never truly know what’s going on inside another person. If he says he is not angry despite his clenched jaw, red face, and throbbing temple, accept it and move on.

Finally, despite our perfect use of Empathic Listening, sometimes our child will not be receptive. If that’s the case (you can tell because he is escalating instead of calming) ditch this tool and move into self preservation. Calmly say something like “I can see you’re not ready to talk about this now, let me know if you want to talk later.” Then walk away and refuse to engage in further argument.

Exerpted with permission from Break Free of Parenting Pressures; Embrace Your Natural Guidance by Debbie Pokornik.

Raising Leaders - Being a Great Boss, Can Help Us Raise Great Kids

Anyone can boss people around…but not everyone will be a great boss. If we can focus on the qualities that separate an ordinary boss from a really great boss and then apply them to our parenting strategies, we will raise great kids.

Ten qualities that a great boss will possess are:

1. Patient with good self-control. A great boss is predictable in that he stays calm and controlled despite the situation. He does not allow his emotions to determine his reaction, but instead uses them to guide him on a path to discovery. Patience and self-control are two things that can challenge us when dealing with our children. Practicing these skills with our kids is a win-win situation.

2. Clear expectations. Expectations are not a guessing game when you have a great boss. This type of leader will be clear on what she wants from you and when she expects it done by. With our kids this might translate into The table needs to be cleared before you go outside.

3. Acknowledges a job well done. We all like to hear when we’ve done a good job and especially appreciate being told what it was we did well. With our kids we can do this by using effective feedback which tells them what they’ve done well and why we like it. Thanks for setting the table it makes my job easier when you help out.

4. Cares about the individual. For a boss, this means knowing a bit about the employee’s life outside of work – birthdays, weekend plans, sick children, etc. For parents, this involves knowing what their child is dealing with in life at the moment, who his friends are, his IT interests (sites surfing, games playing, shows watching) as well as his current hobbies.

5. Teaches, then trusts. A great boss will show you a new task, allow you to try it, make sure you understand it, and then trust you to do the job. With our children, this training is often severely lacking. To really learn something most of us benefit by having it broken down in steps, by being given an opportunity to try it out (hands-on) and by slight, positive adjustments being made when things go wrong. A great boss wouldn’t assume you know the details just from watching, yet often that is what we expect from our kids.

6. Provides assertive correction. A great boss will calmly, yet clearly tell you when there is a problem with something you’ve done, complete with an explanation of why this behaviour is a problem. This boss will not accept excuses or shirking of responsibility, but is willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. A great boss believes in you and recognizes mistakes are an inevitable part of living. Paying attention to how you are correcting your kids can make the difference between teaching them the lesson, and making them feel “faulty” for making a mistake.

7. Role models desired behaviours. A great boss does not say one thing and do another, unless he’s very clear about his reasons for this discrepancy. It is critical we remember our kids learn far more from what we do than what we say. As much as possible we want our behaviours to match the values we are trying to teach.

8. Promotes independence and interdependence. A great boss allows employees to be individuals within the boundaries of company standards. She doesn’t try to make clones of herself, but recognizes the unique talents each person brings to the table. She also expects people to work together for the good of the company. While our kids might seem to be a lot like us, they are individuals and will benefit most when we recognize and support that. If we allow our child to be her own unique self while working towards a common set of family goals, we will have a much happier team.

9. Avoids micro-managing. A great boss gives us a task, ensures we understand the details and timeline and then allows us to do it. When we want our kids to do things we often ask (or tell) them, wait a moment and then nag at them to do as they were asked. Besides being irritating, this tells our kids they do not need to do what we ask until our level of nagging hits a certain octave!

10. Promotes mutual respect. A great boss promotes a respectful relationship by treating her employees with respect. Orders are given sparingly and without personal attack. Ordering our children might seem more efficient, but in the end it will cause a lot of extra work. Watch the tone of voice you are using with your kids and be aware of how much you are ordering, rather than asking or suggesting.

Our children really are the bosses of the future. If we can keep these qualities in mind and practice them as much as possible in our family environment, we will have future leaders who are ready and able to be great.

Debbie is the owner of Empowering NRG and author of Break Free of Parenting Pressures: Embrace Your Natural Guidance. She believes all parents can use support at some point in their parenting experience and has made it her mission to help with this task. For more info go to http://www.empoweringnrg.com

Understanding Empathy, Seven Tips for Raising Compassionate Children

Empathy is about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and trying to relate to what they might be feeling. Out of empathy comes caring, consideration, compassion and even remorse (if you are unable to think how your actions might hurt another person, how can you possibly feel bad for what you have done?). Some people purposely turn off their empathy to eliminate getting hurt and others are not stimulated to create the empathy pathways in their brain in the first place.

Seven tips for encouraging empathy:

1. Help kids become aware of their own feelings by pointing out what you see. “I can see you’re disappointed” “I understand your disgust…”
   
2. When your child does something hurtful to another person, ask her to think about how it might feel if the roles were reversed. Try to get her thinking without making her feel bad for making a mistake. “I want you to think about how you would feel if someone took away your favorite toy and wouldn’t let you have it back.”
   
3. Share your own feelings and take full responsibility for them. “I’m furious the dog ate my food while I was on the phone – I was looking forward to eating that sandwich.”
   
4. Model empathy to your child. “I can understand why you might feel that way. I would feel angry if someone did that to me.”
   
5. Use situations around you to discuss how other people might be feeling. Tactfully talk about situations you witness or use the characters in movies and TV shows. “She looked like she felt embarrassed when the store clerk laughed at her – what do you think?”
   
6. When people have to care for something living, they often develop a sense of connection which helps to teach empathy. Teach your kids how to take care of something living – a plant, animal, bird or reptile.
   
7. Have your kids act out a short story (fairy tales work well) and encourage them to really immerse themselves in the roles. To be a great actor you have to think carefully about how your character would be feeling which is what empathy is all about.
   

Developing empathy is important for all of us. Getting along with others, being able to wait your turn, treating people with compassion, feeling bad when you mistreat others are all dependent on our ability to care about how that other person might feel. Tuning into others helps us be caring people.

Parent Power: Using Our Power to Build Strong Relationships with Our Kids

As mentioned in a previous article, Parent Power is the authority given to us to guide our children towards acceptable behaviour. It is a neutral power that is automatically given and, when used effectively, can help us raise resilient kids while building a strong, positive relationship with them.

Gaining our children’s compliance is not always an easy thing to do which is why we need our power to back up our words when they refuse to listen. Our goal with our kids is to teach them how to think for themselves and understand why what we tell them to do is necessary, rather than have them blindly follow our direction.

In the end, we want to have taught our kids our version of right versus wrong, created a strong, loving relationship with them so they want to be part of our lives, and built up mutual respect so they will work with us during those tumultuous teenage years.

Five ideas for using your power wisely:

Provide clear expectations, enforcement and follow-through. Kids crave structure. They like to know what is expected of them and what the potential consequence will be for breaking that rule. Just like us, they feel an injustice has been done when they are not told of expectations and then get in trouble for breaking a rule. Be clear about your rules, enforce them consistently and do your best to follow-through on the planned consequence.

Allow choices. People like to be allowed to make their own decisions – although some will oppose it on occasion. People who resist choices usually have something else going on for them – fear of making a bad decision, challenges with self-regulation, etc. Allowing our kids to make choices and teaching them how to make good ones is an important part of helping them develop.

Guide rather than boss. Notice the kind of language that you use and when possible choose words that suggest an action rather than ordering it. For example, “Pick up your jacket” becomes “Your jacket belongs on a hook.” Depending on your child’s personality this can make the difference between daily fights and voluntary compliance. When we boss people around we are using power. Frivolous use of our power does not build respect. Save the bossing for moments when it feels totally necessary, and practice using positive communication the rest of the time.

Choose your battles carefully. There are a lot of things to correct, advise on, or lecture our kids about and if we do them all we cannot possibly build a positive relationship with them. Remember your kids will do things differently from you and will have their own perspective about what is right or wrong in many situations. Any time you have to fight to get your way, you are not teaching, but forcing compliance.

Be creative. Rather than going on automatic and pulling out habitual parenting tools (spanking, grounding, yelling, time-out…) force yourself to think creatively about the situation. Parenting is not a task to do on auto-pilot and yet so often that is what we do. When our kids are babies most of us experiment to figure out how to stop them fussing. As our kids grow and start pushing our buttons we often stop thinking and start reacting. When we force ourselves to come up with a new idea to try we are developing our own brain pathways along with those of our child.

There are a lot of great ways to gain our child’s compliance and still build a loving, respectful relationship. I encourage you to come up with your own, but to get started you might check out two of my earlier (September 09)articles sharing creative ideas for dealing with name calling (Name Calling: How parents and teachers can use it to their benefit) and rude/whiney behaviour (Would You Like a Do-Over?).

The less you use your power muscle and the more you practice using positive parenting strategies, the more you will benefit when your kids reach that rebellious, teenager stage. We all need to use our power sometimes, we just need to be sure we don’t get lazy and start using it to get our way all of the time.

The choice is ours … we have the power to make a difference!

Debbie Pokornik is a presenter and owner of empowering NRG and is releasing her first book Break Free of Parenting Pressures: Release Your Natural Guidance early 2010.

Parent Power: What is it and why is it important to know about it?

Parent Power is the authority given to us as parents to enforce rules and boundaries with our children in order to teach them right from wrong. It gives us permission to get things done using the power of our position and acts like a bottom line that suggests we can indeed “make our kids” do something.

To some of us this sounds terrible – who are we to force our kids to comply? To others it sounds fantastic – you’re darn rights my kids better listen to me. In reality Parent Power is neither good nor bad. It is there by virtue of our role as parents and how we use it can make all the difference in our growing relationship with our child.

Important things to know about Parent Power:

• Used carefully it can be extremely helpful. It allows us to respectfully guide our kids towards appropriate behaviour and build good, strong relationships with them at the same time.

• It must be used by a calm, controlled parent to be effective. Any time we overreact and “lose it” we diminish our Parent Power

• It relies on our children believing in this power for it to work.

• As our kids grow older our Parent Power naturally decreases. By the time our kids are teenagers we must rely on the mutual respect we have built with them to gain their cooperation.

• Used in a negative way Parent Power can cause our kids to tune us out, call our bluff, comply out of fear, or, in extreme circumstances, be removed from our home. It is very difficult to respect a person who lacks self control and uses their power unfairly.

• Because Parent Power is most often used behind closed doors, there is plenty of opportunity to misuse or overuse it.

Recognizing Parent Power

Some common phrases or actions we might use to flex our Parent Power muscle are:

• Because I said so…
• I am your parent and you’ll do as I say
• I have told you to do something and you need to listen to me
• As long as you are under my roof

• Use a loud or authoritative voice
• Intentionally tower over our little one to give our words more power
• Shoot an “I mean business” look at our child to gain compliance
• Use our strength to force our child to do something we’ve asked him to do (i.e. go to his bedroom)

These are not necessarily bad things for us to do. There are times when we need to gain our kid's compliance and in cases where they have decided not to listen this is how we do it. Those parents with a very full parenting pack of strategies and techniques, might rarely (if ever) get to the above examples, but I guarantee they use this power in some other way.

Where it becomes a problem is when we start using this power just to get our way without doing any of the teaching or mentoring that is required in between. Our goal as parents is to teach our kids how to think so they can make good sound decisions on their own. We cannot do this by regularly using power comments or actions just to get our way.

Using your Parent Power is not a bad thing – it has been given to you as a tool to use. My next article will talk about positive ways to use Parent Power, but for now just becoming aware of how and when you are using it can tune you in to what you are teaching and whether or not you are building the relationship you really would like to have with your child.

So think about your use of Parent Power and by all means leave me comments, questions or stories as you see fit.

Halloween Memories: Back away from the candies

When my kids were younger I was very careful about the kind of food they ate and how often they could eat it. They had very little processed stuff and rarely ate white sugar. When Halloween came around however, all of that changed.

In the beginning I wanted to control the candy intake and restricted the amount they could have. This was quite a job and I quickly realized it wasn't worth the effort. I decided to do something different and set up a deal.

The deal was that when they came home with their huge satchel of items (we live in the country so the bounty is huge) we would go through and throw out anything with Aspartame or similar substances. Colas were given to Dad to take to work and other can drinks were put away for later. The kids then divided their candy up into a pile of everything they liked (or thought they would like) and anything they didn't like. The stuff they didn't like was put in a bag to go to our local food bank. On occasion I would buy some of their might like items for a nickel a piece as a further incentive to let stuff go.

Armed with their bag of favorites, the first holiday (i.e. Saturday) after Halloween my kids celebrated what we called candy day. This was a day when they could eat as much candy as they wanted, starting as early as they wanted. The only rules were that all wrappers (or other evidence of the candy fest) had to be put in the garbage and that no matter how much sugar (and other things) they put in their bodies they had to maintain their self-control (i.e. you could not go ballistic and start fighting with each other just because you were feeling the jitters)

The first time we did this, I really thought my kids would feel sick and never want to over do it like that again. I thought they wouldn't eat anything but candy until supper and would quicly become cranky and rude. I was wrong.

They ate a tonne of candy, still ate every healthy meal that was offered that day and never lost control of their behaviour. They had a lot of fun playing games all day and at the end of the day went to bed tired, but happy. No ill effects were noticed even a week after the fact.

Best of all, by the end of the day their candy--or at least all their favorites--were gone and that huge pull the sack of goods would normally have over them completely disappeared.

I learned from this little experiment that sometimes its fun to just let go of the rules and enjoy the reality of the moment. My kids love candy day and still talk about it every year. Being teenagers their diets have taken quite a dive, but I have faith that the healthy start they were given in life will still benefit them. I also believe that this little experiment has allowed them to create happy memories of the days following Halloween and I'm not sure that would have been the case if we hadn't gone in this direction.

Understanding Assertiveness: Standing up for yourself in a way that is both positive and affirming

It’s hard to be assertive if you don’t understand how it is different from aggression, what it does, or why it is important. Being assertive means standing up for yourself and the things you believe in without attacking or putting another person down. It is a skill that requires self control, personal strength and clarity on what you believe. Assertiveness never involves behaviours like shouting, insulting, threatening or swearing at another.

It is important when being assertive to understand this is something you do for yourself to let go of negative emotions. It is not about getting your way or setting the other person straight, as much as it is about saying your piece and feeling good about yourself in the process.

The reason this is important, is if you think being assertive is about changing the behaviour of the other person and that person doesn’t change, you can feel as if assertiveness has failed you. Anytime we try to control other people’s behaviour we set ourselves up for potential failure.

Assertiveness is done to build yourself up and let other people know how you feel. It is a way of venting emotions that would otherwise bottle up inside of you and eventually surface as an emotional explosion or illness. The trick to being successful at it is to stay calm, make your point and then let it go. If you continue to rethink the scene in a negative way, you will not reap the benefits of standing up for yourself.

Although changing other people’s behaviour is not the goal of this act, one of the great things about being assertive is that an ill-meaning offender will be counting on you reacting passively (doing nothing) or aggressively (attacking). When you assertively respond with strength and composure it throws him off balance which can result in a change in his behaviour. Sometimes this will create a reluctant form of respect, causing him to change his behaviour towards you permanently. When this happens consider it a bonus as you reap the rewards of your emotional vent and witness a positive result from your actions at the same time.

If you are already good at being assertive keep up the great work and be sure to model it for others (especially children). If however, like many people, you have gotten assertiveness confused with aggression, or have been playing the victim while others walk all over you, it would be a good idea to start working on developing this skill. Assertiveness grows from confidence and confidence feeds off being assertive. Sounds like a worthwhile investment to me.

Debbie Pokornik is the owner of empowering NRG. She helps people regain or maintain balance in their lives using natural, realistic guidance. To book Debbie for keynotes, workshops or other events, go to http://empoweringnrg.com

Strong relationships: Five things that weaken relationships and how to fix them

Relationships are built by the little things we do, making these little things very important. Being aware of the kinds of things that strengthen or weaken our relationships, helps us build something strong enough to weather any storm.

Five things to be aware of when building relationship:

1) Overdoing the teasing/jokes. Taking little shots at one another can be fun and affirming in a relationship. Knowing a person well enough to joke with him about little details in his life creates an intimate connection. The problem is when we overdo it. We joke too often, or in front of the wrong people and end up hurting, embarrassing or angering the person we were trying to tease. Instead of being funny we create a rift that can develop into a sensitive area. Remedy: balance your joking with twice as many sincere compliments or other signs of appreciation.

2) Not giving back to the relationship. When life gets busy many of us begin to take our relationships for granted and forget to do the maintenance to keep them strong. When this happens we stop doing the little positives and ride on the strength we have already built. The problem with this is we are still doing the little negatives causing our relationship to weaken over time. Remedy: find the time to listen without judgment, do kind acts, say nice things, stand up for the other person whether she is present or not and have quality moments.

3) Telling stories that are not ours to tell. Part of having a strong relationship is sharing our stories, intimate thoughts, and secrets. Sometimes these tales are too funny, cute, or shocking to keep to ourselves. As a result we tell it to others, embellishing as we go. The problem is, without permission to share these stories we are actually gossiping and hurting our relationship. People feel vulnerable when they are “talked about” and are not in the room. Remedy: when you find yourself sharing a story that is not yours, stop…or at least be sure to tell it as if the person involved was standing beside you listening.

4) Being too unpredictable. Most of us equate being unpredictable with a sense of adventure and fun. It adds spice to life and keeps things interesting. The problem in relationships arises when we are too unpredictable. There is a comfort that comes from knowing a person and having a sense of how they will behave. Even if their behaviour is erratic it is still comfortable to us if that is what we’ve come to expect (An exception to this is when people are predictably violent, it is hard to feel comfortable in that situation even when we can predict it). When we are too hard to predict we make it challenging for people to build relationships with us. Remedy: figure out your core values and live true to those values. If you are predictable at the core you will be easier to know.

5) Not trusting or giving the benefit of the doubt. All strong relationships are built on a foundation of trust. We believe in the other person and are willing to give her the benefit of the doubt in any questionable situations. When we find ourselves not believing in the other person, but instead judging or accusing her, we make it challenging for our relationship to grow. Remedy: trust, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. If trust has been broken, start with baby steps and repair using all the steps above.

Relationships are complicated. They take work yet can feel effortless when things are going well. By being aware of what makes a relationship strong and then putting in the effort to build a little bit everyday, we can create structures that quite literally last a life time.

Debbie Pokornik is the owner of empowering nrg. She helps people achieve balance in their lives using natural, realistic guidance...because a little nrg can go a long way. For other great tips or to book Debbie for keynotes/workshops, go to http://empoweringnrg.com/ or check out her fan page at http://bit.ly/dpokofanpage